Access to information?

Tomorrow I am supposed to teach classes about evaluating blogs. Ironically, the more information I find on the net about blogs, the less I think I know. I learned about Technorati and Blogpulse and that neither identifies my blog during a search!

Of major concern in teaching this class is that students cannot actually access blogs at school. Our school district has blocked all student access to blogs. It makes it quite difficult to teach students to be information literate if they aren't allowed access to the information. I will have to guide them through the evaluation procedure by using my own log-in and a program called NetOps. NetOps allows the teacher to take control of all the student computers in the computer lab and has a demonstration mode--the students will see whatever is on my screen. So, I will walk them through some sample blogs and they will ask the questions that were suggested by Joyce Valenza at the 21st Century Information Fluency website: http://21cif.imsa.edu/rkitp/assessment/v1n5/blog_evaluation_assessment_v1n5.html. Then they will have to try to find blogs that relate to their research paper topics.

There is the question of equal access in this case, too. Not all of our students have computers at home, and even if they have a computer, many families have turned off their internet access as economic times get tougher (and some never had any in the first place). Other students must share the one family computer with parents and siblings. Many of our students work at night, so they may not be able to utilize the public library, and blog access is blocked in the school library. It's really a catch-22--how can we teach them to be information literate if they don't have access to the information in the first place?

As this economic downturn plays out, this will become an important question for schools and districts. Will we help students bridge the digital divide by providing access in schools, or will the digital divide widen along with the economic haves and have-nots?